AMERICAN LANGUAGES, 


AND WHY WE SHOULD STUDY THEM. 


AN ADDRESS 


DELIVERED BEFORE THE PENNSYLVANIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY, 

MARCH 9, 1885, 


BY 

DANIEL G. BRINTON, M.D., 

li 

PROFESSOR OF ETHNOLOGY ANP ARCHAEOLOGY AT THE ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES, 

PHILADELPHIA. 


REPRINTED FROM THE 

PENNSYLVANIA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY. 


"I o 

> 5 > 


PRINTED BY 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA. 

1885 . 




p/vf i 07 

■ B : 7 



&af2ey- 

' 9 * 




ft 

« 


ft 




9 


ft ft •• 
« 





AMEKICAN LANGUAGES, AND WHY WE SHOULD 
STUDY THEM. 


Mr. President, etc. : 

I appear before you to-night to enter a plea for one of the 
most neglected branches of learning, for a study usually 
considered hopelessly dry and unproductive,—that of Amer¬ 
ican aboriginal languages. 

It might be thought that such a topic, in America and 
among Americans, would attract a reasonably large number 
of students. The interest which attaches to our native soil 
and to the homes of our ancestors—an interest which it is 
the praiseworthy purpose of this Society to inculcate and 
cherish—this interest might be supposed to extend to the 
languages of those nations who for uncounted generations 
possessed the land which we have occupied relatively so 
short a time. 

This supposition would seem the more reasonable in view 
of the fact that in one sense these languages have not died 
out among us. True, they are no longer media of inter¬ 
course, but they survive in thousands of geographical names 
all over our land. In the State of Connecticut alone there 
are over six hundred, and even more in Pennsylvania. 

Certainly it would be a most legitimate anxiety which 
should direct itself to the preservation of the correct forms 
and precise meanings of these numerous and peculiarly 
national designations. One would think that this alone 
would not fail to excite something more than a languid 
curiosity in American linguistics, at least in our institutions 
of learning and societies for historical research. 

Such a motive applies to the future as well as to the past. 
We have yet thousands of names to affix to localities, ships, 

3 


4 American Languages . 

cars, country-seats, and the like. Why should we fall back 
on the dreary repetition of the Old World nomenclature ? I 
turn to a Gazetteer of the United States, and I find the name 
Athens repeated 34 times to as many villages and towns in 
our land, Eome and Palmyra each 29 times, Troy 58 times, 
not to speak of Washington, which is entered for 331 dif¬ 
ferent places in this Gazetteer! 

What poverty of invention does this manifest! 

Evidently the forefathers of our christened West were, 
like Sir John FalstafF, at a loss where a commodity of good 
names was to be had. 

Yet it lay immediately at their hands. The native tongues 
supply an inexhaustible store of sonorous, appropriate, and 
unused names. As has well been said by an earlier writer, 
“ No class of terms could be applied more expressive and 
more American. The titles of the Old World certainly 
need not be copied, when those that are fresh and fragrant 
with our natal soil await adoption.” 1 

That this study has received so slight attention I attribute 
to the comparatively recent understanding of the value of 
the study of languages in general, and more particularly to 
the fact that no one, so far as I know, has set forth the pur¬ 
poses for which we should investigate these tongues, and the 
results which we expect to reach by means of them. This 
it is my present purpose to attempt, so far as it can he accom¬ 
plished in the scope of an evening address. 

The time has not long passed when the only good reasons 
for studying a language were held to he either that we might 
thereby acquaint ourselves with its literature; or that certain 
business, trading, or political interests might he subserved; 
or that the nation speaking it might be made acquainted 
with the blessings of civilization and Christianity. These 
were all good and sufficient reasons, but I cannot adduce 
any one of them in support of my plea to-night; for the lan¬ 
guages I shall speak of have no literature; all transactions 
with their people can he carried on as well or better in 
European tongues; and, in fact, many of these people are 
1 H. R. Schoolcraft. 


5 


Amei'ican Languages . 

no longer in existence. They have died out or amalgamated 
with others. What I have to argue for is the study of the 
dead languages of extinct and barbarous tribes. 

You will readily see that my arguments must be drawn 
from other considerations than those of immediate utility. 
I must seek them in the broader fields of ethnology and 
philosophy; I must appeal to your interest in man as a 
race, as a member of a common species, as possessing in all 
his families and tribes the same mind, the same soul. It 
was the proud prerogative of Christianity first to proclaim 
this great truth, to break down the distinctions of race and 
the prejudices of nationalities, in order to erect upon their 
ruins that catholic temple of universal brotherhood which 
excludes no man as a stranger or an alien. After eighteen 
hundred years of labor, science has reached that point which 
the religious instinct divined, and it is in the name of science 
that I claim for these neglected monuments of man’s powers 
that attention which they deserve. 

Anthropology is the science which studies man as a species; 
Ethnology , that which studies the various nations which make 
up the species. To both of these the science of Linguistics 
is more and more perceived to be a powerful, an indispensa¬ 
ble auxiliary. Through it we get nearer to the real man, his 
inner self, than by any other avenue of approach, and it needs 
no argument to show that nothing more closely binds men 
into a social unit than a common language. Without it, 
indeed, there can be no true national unity. The affinities 
of speech, properly analyzed and valued, are our most trust¬ 
worthy guides in tracing the relationship and descent of 
nations. 

If this is true in general, it is particularly so in the eth¬ 
nology of America. Language is almost our only clue to 
discover the kinship of those countless scattered hordes who 
roamed the forests of this broad continent. Their traditions 
are vague or lost, written records they had none, their cus¬ 
toms and arts are misleading, their religions misunderstood, 
their languages alone remain to testify to a oneness of blood 
often seemingly repudiated by an internecine hostility. 


6 


American Languages. 


I am well aware of the limits which a wise caution assigns 
to the employment of linguistics in ethnology, and I am only 
too familiar with the many foolish, unscientific attempts to 
employ it with reference to the American race. But in 
spite of all this, I repeat that it is the surest and almost our 
only means to trace the ancient connection and migrations 
of nations in America. 

Through its aid alone we have reached a positive knowl¬ 
edge that most of the area of South America, including the 
whole of the West Indies, was occupied by three great 
families of nations, not one of which had formed any im¬ 
portant settlement on the northern continent. By similar 
evidence we know that the tribe which greeted Penn, when 
he landed on the site of this city where I now speak, was a 
member of one vast family,—the great Algonkin stock,— 
whose various clans extended from the palmetto swamps of 
Carolina to the snow-clad hills of Labrador, and from the 
easternmost cape of Newfoundland to the peaks of the 
Rocky Mountains, over 20° of latitude and 50° of longitude. 
We also know that the general trend of migration in the 
northern continent has been from north to south, and that 
this is true not only of the more savage tribes, as the Al- 
gonkins, Iroquois, and Athapascas, but also of those who, 
in the favored southern lands, approached a form of civiliza¬ 
tion, the Aztecs, the Mayas, and the Quiche. These and 
many minor ethnologic facts have already been obtained by 
the study of American languages. 

But such external information is only a small part of what 
they are capable of disclosing. We can turn them, like the 
reflector of a microscope, on the secret and hidden mysteries 
of the aboriginal man, and discover his inmost motives, his 
impulses, his concealed hopes and fears, those that gave rise 
to his customs and laws, his schemes of social life, his super¬ 
stitions and his religions. 

The life-work of that eminent antiquary, the late Mr. 
Lewis Id. Morgan, was based entirely on linguistics. He 
attempted, by an exhaustive analysis of the terms of rela¬ 
tionship in American tribes, to reconstruct their primitive 


7 


American Languages . 

theory of the social compact, and to extend this to the frame¬ 
work of ancient society in general. If, like most students 
enamored of an idea, he carried its application too far, the 
many correct results he obtained will ever remain as prized 
possessions of American ethnology. 

Personal names, family names, titles, forms of salutation, 
methods of address, terms of endearment, respect, and re¬ 
proach, words expressing the emotions, these are what 
infallibly reveal the daily social family life of a community, 
and the way in which its members regard one another. 
They are precisely as correct when applied to the investiga¬ 
tion of the American race as elsewhere, and they are the 
more valuable just there, because his deep-seated distrust of 
the white invaders—for which, let us acknowledge, he had 
abundant cause—led the Indian to practise concealment and 
equivocation on these personal topics. 

In no other way can the history of the development of his 
arts he reached. You are doubtless aware that diligent stu¬ 
dents of the Aryan languages have succeeded in faithfully 
depicting the arts and habits of that ancient community in 
which the common ancestors of Greek and Roman, Persian 
and Dane, Brahmin and Irishman dwelt together as of one 
blood and one speech. This has been done by ascertaining 
what household words are common to all these tongues, and 
therefore must have been in use among the primeval horde 
from which they are all descended. The method is conclu¬ 
sive, and yields positive results. There is no reason why it 
should not be addressed to American languages, and we 
may be sure that it would be most fruitful. How valuable 
it would be to take even a few words, as maize, tobacco, 
pipe, how, arrow, and the like, each representing a wide¬ 
spread art or custom, and trace their derivations and affini¬ 
ties through the languages of the whole continent! We 
may be sure that striking and unexpected results would be 
obtained. 

Similar lines of research suggest themselves in other 
directions. You all know what a fuss has lately been made 
about the great Pyramid as designed to preserve the linear 


8 


American Languages. 


measure of the ancient Egyptians. The ascertaining of such 
measures is certainly a valuable historical point, as all artistic 
advance depends upon the use of instruments of precision. 
Mathematical methods have been applied to American archi¬ 
tectural remains for the same purpose. But the study of 
words of measurement and their origin is an efficient 
auxiliary. By comparing such in the languages of three 
architectural people, the Aztecs of Mexico, the Mayas of 
Yucatan, and the Cakchiquel of Guatemala, I have found 
that the latter used the span and the two former the foot, 
and that this foot was just about one-fiftieth less than the 
ordinary foot of our standard. Certainly this is a useful 
result. 

I have made some collections for a study of a different 
character. Of all the traits of a nation, the most decisive 
on its social life and destiny is the estimate it places upon 
women,—that is, upon the relation of the sexes. This is 
faithfully mirrored in language; and by collecting and an¬ 
alyzing all words expressing the sexual relations, all saluta¬ 
tions of men to women and women to men, all peculiarities 
of the diction of each, we can ascertain far more exactly 
than by any mere description of usages what were the feel¬ 
ings which existed between them. Did they know love as 
something else than lust ? Were the pre-eminently civilizing 
traits of the feminine nature recognized and allowed room 
for action ? These are crucial questions, and their answer 
is contained in the spoken language of every tribe. 

Nowhere, however, is an analytic scrutiny of words more 
essential than in comparative mythology. It alone enables 
us to reach the meaning of rites, the foundations of myths, 
the covert import of symbols. It is useless for any one to 
write about the religion of an American tribe who has not 
prepared himself by a study of its language, and acquainted 
himself with the applications of linguistics to mythology. 
Very few have taken this trouble, and the result is that all 
the current ideas on this subject are entirely erroneous. 
We hear about a Good Spirit and a Bad Spirit, about poly¬ 
theism, fetichism, and animism, about sun worship and 


American Languages. 9 

serpent worship, and the like. No tribe worshipped a Good 
and a Bad Spirit, and the other vague terms I have quoted 
do not at all express the sentiment manifested in the native 
religious exercises. What this was we can satisfactorily 
ascertain by analyzing the names applied to their divinities, 
the epithets they use in their prayers and invocations, and 
the primitive sense of words which have become obscured 
by alterations of sounds. 

A singular example of the last is presented by the tribes 
to whom I have already referred as occupying this area,— 
the Algonkins. Wherever 'they were met, whether far up 
in Canada, along the shores of Lake Superior, on the banks 
of the Delaware, by the Virginia streams, or in the pine 
woods of Maine, they always had a tale to tell of the Great 
Hare, the wonderful Rabbit which in times long ago cre¬ 
ated the world, became the father of the race, taught his 
children the arts of life and the chase, and still lives some¬ 
where far to the East where the sun rises. What debasing 
animal worship ! you will say, and so many others have said. 
Not at all. It is a simple result of verbal ambiguity. The 
word for rabbit in Algonkin is almost identical with that 
for light , and when these savages applied this word to their 
divinity, they agreed with him who said, “ God is Light, 
and in Him is no darkness at all.” 

These languages offer also an entertaining field to the 
psychologist. 

On account of their transparency, as I may call it, the 
clearness with which they retain the primitive forms of 
their radicals, they allow us to trace out the growth of 
words, and thus reveal the operations of the native mind 
by a series of witnesses whose testimony cannot be ques¬ 
tioned. Often curious associations of ideas are thus dis¬ 
closed, very instructive to the student of mankind. Many 
illustrations of this could be given, but I do not wish to 
assail your ears by a host of unknown sounds, so I will con¬ 
tent myself with one, and that taken from the language of 
the Lenape, or Delaware Indians, who, as you know, lived 
where we now are. 


10 


American Languages. 


I will endeavor to trace out one single radical in that 
language, and show you how many, and how strangely 
diverse ideas were built up upon it. 

The radical which I select is the personal pronoun of the 
first person, I, Latin Ego. In Delaware this is a single 
syllable, a slight nasal, Ne, or Ni. 

Let me premise by informing you that this is both a per¬ 
sonal and a possessive pronoun ; it means both I and mine. 
It is also both singular and plural, both I and we, mine and 
our. 

The changes of the application of this root are made by 
adding suffixes to it. 

I begin with ni'hillan , literally, “ mine, it is so,” or “ she, 
it, is truly mine,” the accent being on the first syllable, ni', 
mine. But the common meaning of this verb in Delaware 
is more significant of ownership than this tame expression. 
It is an active animate verb, and. means “ I heat, or strike, 
somebody.” To the rude minds of the framers of that 
tongue, ownership meant the right to heat what one owned. 

We might hope this sense was confined to the lower 
animals; hut not so. Change the accent from the first to 
the second syllable, ni'hillan, to nihil'lan, and you have the 
animate active verb with an intensive force, which signifies 
“ to beat to death,” “ to kill some person;” and from this, 
by another suffix, you have nihil'lowen, to murder, and nihil'- 
lowet, murderer. The had sense of the root is here pushed 
to its uttermost. 

But the root also developed in a nobler direction. Add 
to ni'hillan the termination ape, which means a male, and 
you have nihillape, literally, “ I, it is true, a man,” which, as 
an adjective, means free, independent, one’s own master, 
“ I am my own man.” From this are derived the noun, 
nihillapewit, a freeman; the verb, nihillapewin, to he free; and 
the abstract, nihillasowagan, freedom, liberty, independence. 
These are glorious words; but I can go even farther. From 
this same theme is derived the verb nihillape-wheu, to set 
free, to liberate, to redeem; and from this the missionaries 
framed the word nihillape-whoalid, the Redeemer, the Saviour. 


11 


American Languages. 

Here is an unexpected antithesis, the words for a mur¬ 
derer and the Saviour both from one root! It illustrates 
how strange is the concatenation of human thoughts. 

These are by no means all the derivatives from the root 
ni, I. 

When reduplicated as nene , it has a plural and strength¬ 
ened form, like “ our own.” With a pardonable and well- 
nigh .universal weakness, which we share with them, the 
nation who spoke that language believed themselves the 
first created of mortals and the most favored by the Cre¬ 
ator. Hence whatever they designated as “ ours” was 
both older and better than others of its kind. Hence nenni 
came to mean ancient, primordial, indigenous, and as such 
it is a frequent prefix in the Delaware language. Again, 
as they considered themselves the first and only true men, 
others being barbarians, enemies, or strangers, nenno was 
understood to be one of us, a man like ourselves, of our 
nation. 

In their different dialects the sounds of n , l , and r were 
alternated, so that while Thomas Campanius, who trans¬ 
lated the Catechism into Delaware about 1645, wrote that 
word rhennus , later writers have given it lenno , and trans¬ 
late it “man.” This is the word which we find in the 
name Lenni Lenape, which, by its derivation, means “ we, 
we men.” The antecedent lenni is superfluous. The proper 
name of the Delaware nation was and still is Len ape, “ we 
men,” or “ our men,” and those critics who have maintained 
that this was a misnomer, introduced by Mr. Heckewelder, 
have been mistaken in their facts. 

I have not done with the root ne. I might go on and 
show you how it is at the base of the demonstrative pro¬ 
nouns, this, that, those, in Delaware; how it is the radical 
of the words for thinking, reflecting, and meditating; how 
it also gives rise to words expressing similarity and identity; 
how it means to be foremost, to stand ahead of others; and 
finally, how it signifies to come to me, to unify or congre¬ 
gate together. But doubtless I have trespassed on your ears 
long enough with unfamiliar words. 


12 


American Languages. 


Such suggestions as these will give you some idea of the 
value of American languages to American ethnology. But I 
should be doing injustice to my subject were I to confine my 
arguments in favor of their study to this horizon. If they are 
essential to a comprehension of the red race, not less so are 
the} 7 to the science of linguistics in general. This science 
deals not with languages, but with language. It looks at the 
idiom of a nation, not as a dry catalogue of words and gram¬ 
matical rules, but as the living expression of the thinking 
power of man, as the highest manifestation of that spiritual 
energy which has lifted him from the level of the brute, the 
complete definition of which, in its origin and evolution, is 
the loftiest aim of universal history. As the intention of all 
speech is the expression of thought, and as the final purpose 
of all thinking is the discovery of truth, so the ideal of lan¬ 
guage, the point toward which it strives, is the absolute form 
for the realization of intellectual function. 

In this high quest no tongue can be overlooked, none can 
be left out of account. One is just as important as another. 
Goethe once said that he who knows but one language knows 
none; we may extend the apothegm, and say that so long as 
there is a single language on the globe not understood and 
analyzed, the science of language will be incomplete and 
illusory. It has often proved the case that the investigation 
of a single, narrow, obscure dialect has changed the most 
important theories of history. What has done more than 
anything else to overthrow, or, at least, seriously to shake, 
the time-honored notion that the White Race first came from 
Central Asia ? It was the study of the Lithuanian dialect 
on the Baltic Sea, a language of peasants, without literature 
or culture, but which displays forms more archaic than the 
Sanscrit. What has led to a complete change of views as 
to the prehistoric population of Southern Europe? The 
study of the Basque, a language unknown out of a few 
secluded valleys in the Pyrenees. 

There are many reasons why unwritten languages, like 
those of America, are more interesting, more promising in 
results, to the student of linguistics than those which for 


American Languages. 13 

generations have been cast in the conventional moulds of 
written speech. 

Their structure is more direct, simple, transparent; they 
reveal more clearly the laws of the linguistic powers in their 
daily exercise; they are less tied down to hereditary formulae 
and meaningless repetitions. 

Would we explain the complicated structure of highly- 
organized tongues like our own, would we learn the laws 
which have assigned to it its material and formal elements, 
we must turn to the naive speech of savages, there to see in 
their nakedness those processes which are too obscure in 
our own. 

If the much-debated question of the origin of language 
engages us, we must seek its solution in the simple radicals 
of savage idioms; and if we wish to institute a comparison 
between the relative powers of languages, we can by no 
means omit them from our list. They offer to us the raw 
material, the essential and indispensable requisites of articu¬ 
late communication. 

As the structure of a language reflects in a measure, and 
as, on the other hand, it in a measure controls and directs 
the mental workings of those who speak it, the student of 
psychology must occupy himself with the speech of the most 
illiterate races in order to understand their theory of things, 
their notions of what is about them. They teach him the 
undisturbed evolution of the untrained mind. 

As the biologist in pursuit of that marvellous something 
which we call “ the vital principle” turns from the complex 
organisms of the higher animals and plants to life in its 
simplest expression in microbes and single cells, so in the 
future will the linguist find that he is nearest the solution of 
the most weighty problems of his science when he directs 
his attention to the least cultivated languages. 

Convinced as I am of the correctness of this analogy, I 
venture to predict that in the future the analysis of the 
American languages will be regarded as one of the most 
important fields in linguistic study, and will modify most 
materially the findings of that science. And I make this 


14 


American Languages. 


prediction the more confidently, as I am supported in it by 
the great authority of Wilhelm von Humboldt, who for 
twenty years devoted himself to their investigation. 

As I am advocating so warmly that more attention should 
be devoted to these languages, it is hut fair that you should 
require me to say something descriptive about them, to ex¬ 
plain some of their peculiarities of structure. To do this 
properly I should require not the fag end of one lecture, but 
a whole course of lectures. Yet perhaps I can say enough 
now to show you how much there is in them worth studying. 

Before I turn to this, however, I should like to combat a 
prejudice which I fear you may entertain. It is that same 
ancient prejudice which led the old Greeks to call all those 
who did not speak their sonorous idioms barbarians; for 
that word meant nothing more nor less than babblers (ftaX- 
ftaAm), people who spoke an unintelligible tongue. Modern 
civilized nations hold that prejudice yet, in the sense that 
each insists that its own language is the best one extant, the 
highest in the scale, and that wherein others differ from it 
in structure they are inferior. 

So unfortunately placed is this prejudice with reference to 
my subject, that in the very volume issued by our govern¬ 
ment at Washington to encourage the study of the Indian 
languages, there is a long essay to prove that English is the 
noblest, most perfect language in the world, while all the 
native languages are, in comparison, of a very low grade 
indeed! 

The essayist draws his arguments chiefly from the ab¬ 
sence of inflections in English. Yet many of the pro¬ 
found est linguists of this century have maintained that a 
fully inflected language, like the Greek or Latin, is for 
that very reason ahead of all others. We may suspect 
that when a writer lauds his native tongue at the expense 
of others, he is influenced by a prejudice in its favor and an 
absence of facility in the others. 

Those best acquainted with American tongues praise 
them most highly for flexibility, accuracy, and resources of 
expression. They place some of them above any Aryan 


15 


American Languages. 

language. But what is this to those who do not know 
them? To him who cannot bend the how of Ulysses it 
naturally seems a useless and awkward weapon. 

I do not ask you to accept this opinion either; but I do 
ask that you rid your minds of bias, and that you do not 
condemn a tongue because it differs widely from that which 
you speak. 

American tongues do, indeed, differ very widely from 
those familiar to Aryan ears. Not that they are all alike in 
structure. That was a hasty generalization, dating from a 
time when they were less known. Yet the great majority 
of them have certain characteristics in common, sufficient to 
place them in a linguistic class by themselves. I shall name 
and explain some of these. 

As of the first importance I would mention the promi¬ 
nence they assign to pronouns and pronominal forms. In¬ 
deed, an eminent linguist has been so impressed with this 
feature that he has proposed to classify them distinctively as 
“ pronominal languages.” They have many classes of pro¬ 
nouns, sometimes as many as eighteen, which is more than 
twice as many as the Greek. There is often no distinction 
between a noun and a verb other than the pronoun which 
governs it. That is, if a word is employed with one form 
of the pronoun it becomes a noun, if with another pronoun, 
it becomes a verb. 

We have something of the same kind in English. In the 
phrase “ I love,” love is a verb; but in “ my love,” it is a 
noun. It is noteworthy that this treatment of words as 
either nouns or verbs, as we please to employ them, was 
carried further by Shakespeare than by any other English 
writer. He seemed to divine in such a trait of language 
vast resources for varied and pointed expression. If I may 
venture a suggestion as to how it does confer peculiar 
strength to expressions, it is that it brings into especial 
prominence the idea of Personality; it directs all subjects 
of discourse by the notion of an individual, a living, per¬ 
sonal unit. This imparts vividness to narratives, and direct¬ 
ness and life to propositions. 


16 


American Languages. 


Of these pronouns, that of the first person is usually the 
most developed. From it, in many dialects, are derived the 
demonstratives and relatives, which in Aryan languages 
were taken from the third person. This prominence of the 
Ego , this confidence in self, is a trait of the race as well as 
of their speech. It forms part of that savage independ¬ 
ence of character which prevented them coalescing into 
great nations, and led them to prefer death to servitude. 

Another characteristic, which at one time was supposed 
to he universal on this continent, is what Mr. Peter S. Du 
Ponceau named poly synthesis. He meant by this a power 
of running several words into one, dropping parts of them 
and retaining only the significant syllables. Long descrip¬ 
tive names of all objects of civilized life new to the Indians 
were thus coined with the greatest ease. Some of these 
are curious enough. The Pavant Indians call a school- 
house by one word, which means “ a stopping-place where 
sorcery is practised;” their notion of book-learning being 
that it belongs to the uncanny arts. The Delaware word 
for horse means “ the four-footed animal which carries on 
his back.” 

This method of coining words is, however, by no means 
universal in American languages. It prevails in most of 
those in British America and the United States, in Aztec 
and various South American idioms; but in others, as the 
dialects found in Yucatan and Guatemala, and in the Tupi 
of Brazil, the Otomi of Mexico, and the Klamath of the 
Pacific coast, it is scarcely or not at all present. 

Another trait, however, which was confounded with this 
by Mr. Du Ponceau, hut really belongs in a different cate¬ 
gory of grammatical structure, is truly distinctive of the 
languages of the continent, and I am not sure that any one 
of them has been shown to be wholly devoid of it. This is 
what is called incorporation. It includes in the verb, or in 
the verbal expression, the object and manner of the action. 

This is effected by making the subject of the verb an in¬ 
separable prefix, and by inserting between it and the verb 
itself, or sometimes directly in the latter, between its sylla- 


American Languages. 


17 


bles, the object, direct or remote, and the particles indica¬ 
ting mode. The time or tense particles, on the other hand, 
will be placed at one end of this compound, either as pre¬ 
fixes or suffixes, thus placing the whole expression strictly 
within the limits of a verbal form of speech. 

Both the above characteristics, I mean Polysynthesis and 
Incorporation, are unconscious efforts to carry out a cer¬ 
tain theory of speech which has aptly enough been termed 
holophrasis , or the putting the whole of a phrase into a single 
word. This is the aim of each of them, though each en¬ 
deavors to accomplish it by different means. Incorporation 
confines itself exclusively to verbal forms, while polysynthesis 
embraces both nouns and verbs. 

Suppose we carry the analysis further, and see if we can 
obtain an answer to the query. Why did this effort at 
blending forms of speech obtain so widely ? Such an inquiry 
will indicate how valuable to linguistic research would prove 
the study of this group of languages. 

I think there is no doubt but that it points unmistakably 
to that very ancient, to that primordial period of human 
utterance when men had not yet learned to connect words 
into sentences, when their utmost efforts at articulate speech 
did not go beyond single words, which, aided by gestures 
and signs, served to convey their limited intellectual con¬ 
verse. Such single vocables did not belong to any particular 
part of speech. There was no grammar to that antique 
tongue. Its disconnected exclamations mean whole sen- 
tences in themselves. 

A large part of the human race, notably, but not exclu¬ 
sively, the aborigines of this continent, continued the tra¬ 
dition of this mode of expression in the structure of their 
tongues long after the union of thought and sound in 
audible speech had been brought to a high degree of per¬ 
fection. 

Although I thus regard one of the most prominent pecu¬ 
liarities of American languages as a survival from an ex¬ 
ceedingly low stage of human development, it by no means 
follows that this is an evidence of their inferiority. 


18 


American Languages. 


The Chinese, who made no effort to combine the primi¬ 
tive vocables into one, but range them nakedly side by 
side, succeeded no better than the American Indians; 
and there is not much beyond assertion to prove that the 
Aryans, who, through their inflections, marked the relation 
of each word in the sentence by numerous tags of case, 
gender, number, etc., got any nearer the ideal perfection of 
language. 

If we apply what is certainly a very fair test, to wit: 
the uses to which a language is and can be put, I cannot 
see that a well-developed American tongue, such as the 
Aztec or the Algonkin, in any way falls short of, say French 
or English. 

It is true that in many of these tongues there is no dis¬ 
tinction made between expressions, which with us are care¬ 
fully separated, and are so in thought. Thus, in the Tupi 
of Brazil and elsewhere, there is but one word for the three 
expressions, “ his father/’ “ he is a father,” and “ he has a 
father;” in many, the simple form of the verb may convey 
three different ideas, as in Ute, where the word for “he 
seizes” means also “ the seizer,” and as a descriptive noun, 
“ a bear,” the animal which seizes. 

This has been charged against these languages, as a lack 
of “ differentiation.” Grammatically this is so, but the 
same charge applies with almost equal force to the English 
language, where the same word may belong to any of four, 
five, even six parts of speech, dependent entirely on the 
connection in which it is used. 

As a set-off, the American languages avoid confusions of 
expression which prevail in European tongues. 

Thus in none of these latter, when I say “the love of 
God,” “ l’amour de Dieu,” “ amor Dei,” can you under¬ 
stand what I mean. You do not know whether I intend 
the love which we have or should have toward God, or 
God’s love toward us. Yet in the Mexican language (and 
many other American tongues) these two quite opposite 
ideas are so clearly distinguished that, as Father Carochi 
warns his readers in his Mexican Grammar, to confound 


19 


American Languages. 

them would not merely be a grievous solecism in speech, 
but a formidable heresy as well. 

Another example. What can you make out of this sen¬ 
tence, which is strictly correct by English grammar: “ John 
told Robert’s son that he must help him” ? You can make 
nothing out of it. It may have any one of six different 
meanings, depending on the persons referred to by the pro¬ 
nouns “he” and “him.” Ro such lamentable confusion 
could occur in any American tongue known to me. The 
Chippeway, for instance, has three pronouns of the third 
person, which designate the near and the remote antece¬ 
dents with the most lucid accuracy. 

There is another point that I must mention in this con¬ 
nection, because I find that it has almost always been over¬ 
looked or misunderstood by critics of these languages. 
These have been free in condemning the synthetic forms of 
construction. But they seem to be ignorant that their use 
is largely optional. Thus, in Mexican, one can arrange the 
same sentence in an analytic or a synthetic form, and this is 
also the case, in a less degree, in the Algonkin. By this 
means a remarkable richness is added to the language. 
The higher the grade of synthesis employed, the more 
striking, elevated, and pointed becomes the expression. In 
common life long compounds are rare, while in the native 
Mexican poetry each line is often but one word. 

Turning now from the structure of these languages to 
their vocabularies, I must correct a widespread notion that 
they are scanty in extent and deficient in the means to 
express lofty or abstract ideas. 

Of course, there are many tracts of thought and learn¬ 
ing familiar to us now which were utterly unknown to 
the American aborigines, and not less so to our own fore¬ 
fathers a few centuries ago. It would be very unfair to 
compare the dictionary of an Indian language with the last 
edition of Webster’s Unabridged. But take the English 
dictionaries of the latter half of the sixteenth century, be¬ 
fore Spenser and Shakespeare wrote, and compare them with 
the Mexican vocabulary of Molina, which contains about 


20 


A merica n La 11 guages. 


13,000 words, or with the Maya vocabulary of the convent 
of Motul, which presents over 20,000, both prepared at that 
date, and your procedure will be just, and you will find it 
not disadvantageous to the American side of the question. 

The deficiency in abstract terms is generally true of these 
languages. They did not have them, because they had no 
use for them,—and the more blessed was their condition. 
European languages have been loaded with several thousand 
such by metaphysics and mysticism, and it has required sev¬ 
eral generations to discover that they are empty wind-bags, 
full of sound and signifying nothing. 

Yet it is well known to students that the power of form¬ 
ing abstracts is possessed in a remarkable degree by many 
native languages. The most recondite formulae of dog¬ 
matic religion, such as the definition of the Trinity’ and 
the difference between consubstantiation and transub- 
stantiation, have been translated into many of them without 
introducing foreign words, and in entire conformity with 
their grammatical structure. Indeed, Dr. Augustin de la 
Rosa, of the University of Guadalajara, who is now the 
only living professor of any American language, says the 
Mexican is peculiarly adapted to render these metaphysical 
subtleties. 

I have been astonished that some writers should bring up 
the primary meaning of a word in an American language 
in order to infer the coarseness of its secondary meaning. 
This is a strangely unfair proceeding, and could be directed 
with equal effect against our own tongues. Thus, I read 
lately a traveller who spoke hardly of an Indian tribe be¬ 
cause their word for “ to love” was a derivative from that 
meaning “ to buy,” and thence “ to prize.” But what did 
the Latin amare , and the English to love , first mean ? Car¬ 
nally living together is what they first meant, and this is not 
a nobler derivation than that of the Indian. Even yet, 
when the most polished of European nations, that one 
which most exalts la grande passion, does not distinguish in 
language between loving their wives and liking their din¬ 
ners, but uses the same word for both emotions, it is scarcely 


American Languages. 21 

wise for us to indulge in much latitude of inference from 
such etymologies. 

Such is the general character of American languages, 
and such are the reasons why they should be preserved and 
studied. The field is vast and demands many laborers to 
reap all the fruit that it promises. It is believed at present 
that there are about two hundred wholly independent stocks 
of languages among the aborigines of this continent. They 
vary most widely in vocabulary, and seemingly scarcely less 
so in grammar. , 

Besides this, each of these stocks is subdivided into 
dialects, each distinguished by its own series of phonetic 
changes, and its own new words. What an opportunity is 
thus offered for the study of the natural evolution of lan¬ 
guage, unfettered by the petrifying art of writing! 

In addition to these native dialects there are the various 
jargons which have sprung up by intercourse with the 
Spanish, English, Dutch, Portuguese, and French settlers. 
These are by no means undeserving of notice. They reveal 
in an instructive manner the laws of the influence which is 
exerted on one another by languages of radically different 
formations. A German linguist of eminence, Prof. Schu- 
chardt, of Gratz, has for years devoted himself to the study 
of the mixed languages of the globe, and his results promise 
to be of the first order of importance for linguistic science. 
In America we find examples of such in the Chinook jargon 
of the Pacific coast, the Jarocho of Mexico, the “ Maya 
mestizado” of Yucatan, the ordinary Lingoa Geral of Brazil, 
and the Nahuatl-Spanish of Nicaragua, in which last men¬ 
tioned jargon, a curious medley of Mexican and low Spanish, 
I have lately published a comedy as written and acted by 
the natives and half-castes of that country. 

All such macaroni dialects must come into consideration, 
if we wish to make a full representation of the linguistic 
riches of this continent. 

What now is doing to collect, collate, and digest this vast 
material? We may cast our eyes over the civilized world 
and count upon our fingers the names of those who are 


22 American Languages . 

engaged in really serviceable and earnest work in this 
department. 

In Germany, the land of scholars, we have the traveller 
von Tschudi, who has lately published a most excellent 
volume on the Qquichua of Peru; Dr. Stoll, of Zurich, who 
is making a specialty of the languages of Guatemala; Mr. 
Julius Platzmann, who has reprinted a number of rare works; 
Prof. Friederich Muller, of Vienna; but I know of no other 
name to mention. In France, an enlightened interest in the 
subject has been kept alive by the creditable labors of the 
Count de Charencey, M. Lucien Adam, and a few other 
students; while the series of American grammars and 
dictionaries published by Maisonneuve, and that edited by 
Alphonse Pinart, are most commendable monuments of 
industry. In Italy, the natal soil of Columbus, in Spain, so 
long the mistress of the Indies, and in England, the mother 
of the bold navigators who explored the coasts of the New 
World, I know not a single person who gives his chief 
interest to this pursuit. 

Would that I could place in sharp contrast to this the 
state of American linguistics in our own country! But out¬ 
side of the official investigators appointed by the Govern¬ 
ment Bureau of Ethnology, who merit the highest praise in 
their several departments, but who are necessarily confined 
to their assigned fields of study, the list is regretfully brief. 

There is first the honored name of Dr. John Gilmary 
Shea. It is a discredit to this country that his “ Library of 
American Linguistics” was forced to suspend publication 
for lack of support. There is Mr. Horatio Hale, who forty 
years ago prepared the “ Philology of the United States Ex¬ 
ploring Expedition,” and who, “ obeying the voice at eve 
obeyed at prime,” has within the last two years contributed 
to American philology some of the most suggestive studies 
which have anywhere appeared. Nor must I omit Dr. J. 
Hammond Trumbull, whose Algonkin studies are marked 
by the truest scientific spirit, and the works on special dia¬ 
lects of Dr. Washington Matthews, the Abbe Cuoq, and 
others. 


23 


American Languages. 

Whatever these worthy students have done, has been 
prompted solely by a love of the subject and an appreciation 
of its scientific value. They have worked without reward 
or the hope of reward, without external stimulus, and almost 
without recognition. 

Not an institution of the higher education in this land has 
an instructor in this branch; not one of our learned societies 
has offered inducements for its study; no enlightened patron 
of science of the many which honor our nation has ever held 
out that encouragement which is needed by the scholar who 
would devote himself to it. 

In conclusion, I appeal to you, and through you to all the 
historical societies of the United States, to aid in removing 
this reproach from American scholarship. Shall we have 
fellowships and professorships in abundance for the teach¬ 
ing of the dead languages and dead religions of another 
hemisphere, and not one for instruction in those tongues of 
our own land, which live in a thousand proper names around 
us, whose words we repeat daily, and whose structure is as 
important to the philosophic study of speech as any of the 
dialects of Greece or India ? 

What is wanted is by offering prizes for essays in this 
branch, by having one or more instructors in it at our great 
universities, and by providing the funds for editing and pub¬ 
lishing the materials for studying the aboriginal languages, 
to awaken a wider interest in them, at the same time that 
the means is furnished wherewith to gratify and extend this 
interest. 

This is the case which I present to you, and for which I 
earnestly solicit your consideration. And that I may add 
weight to my appeal, I close by quoting the words of one of 
America’s most distinguished scientists, Professor William 
Dwight Whitney, of Yale College, who writes to this effect: 

“ The study of American languages is the most fruitful 
and the most important branch of American Archaeology.” 



5 




A 







library OF CONGRESS 


0 029 037 433.9 





V 







